When my niece was born, her family (including me) all participated in baby sign language until she started talking. There were simple hand signals for as many words as a baby could need, such as "more," "bath," "light" and "bird." But by far the most popular hand-word we used during those months of baby-signing was the word "wait."
If my niece cried while her bottle was being prepared, her mom or her nan would wiggle their fingers with palms facing inward. Wait.
As proven by our baby-signing experience, we start learning how to wait as soon as we're born. We wait to be fed. We wait to be picked up.
And as children get older, they wait for Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Getting older, waiting has less and less of a payoff. We wait for dentist appointments, wait for the bill, wait for the laundry to dry.
I always thought the worst type of waiting would be when loved ones go to war. There are countless films and books about world wars that left mothers, wives, sisters and friends waiting at home. Instead of a simple matter of waiting for a buzzer or a pot to boil, these people waited for news, and hoped for the best.
I never imagined I would know what that kind of waiting is like. But now, in the last few weeks before my brother-in-law is to come home from the war zone in Afghanistan, I find myself gladly crossing off days from the calendar.
My husband and his soldier brother are not much alike, yet side-by-side they look like Scottish rugby players - wide-shouldered warriors ready to plow down anything in their way. I took for granted that I could hear their laughter overpowering the room during frequent visits.
A few months into my brother-in-law's Afghanistan tour, he called our house. The connection was terrible and the delay made it hard to tell who was speaking. But when I realized who it was, I handed the phone over to my husband.
That familiar laughter came back for a few moments, and I knew they were joking about a ridiculous looking car or something else I never would have noticed. It was then I realized a family had been split apart, if only temporarily, on account of a very real war.
Now that his return is inching closer, every headline flashing the word "Afghanistan" twists my heart in a way other news doesn't. We all say it is impossible to lose someone so close to us, but that statement gets a little shaky each time someone else does.
After playing such a painfully long game of waiting, it is easy to see why we have to practice waiting so early in life. I will feel relieved when this particular game is over.
